


Breathe Me To Life

by ProwlingThunder



Series: Two and a Number [22]
Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series, Final Fantasy XIII-2
Genre: Accidents, Airships, Alternate Universe, Gen, Right Place Wrong Time, Vehicle Accidents, ship crashes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 15:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19403335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: Noel bristled, shoving his hands into the twisted wreckage to haul the Cacoon soldiers from their transport. But they were all still breathing, which was a miracle all on its own.





	Breathe Me To Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lindwyrm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindwyrm/gifts).



> Prompt: Lightning and Noel (FFXIII) [#10: Breathe]

Noel bristled, shoving his hands into the twisted wreckage to haul the _Cacoon_ soldiers from their transport. Or the remains of it, anyway, metal burning at bared skin and shards of glass biting his heel; the crash had been _bad,_ and there was enough blood that he nearly wondered if they had hit an adamantortoise, blunt force trauma and their securing straps enough to cause unconsciousness and then the sheer compaction of the airship causing... everything else.

But they were all still breathing, which was a miracle all on its own. Perhaps some sort of inertia dampener...? He'd heard that Cacoon soldiers had those, but everyone heard rumors about the people from the moon. What mattered was what was real and what wasn't, so Noel shoved the questions aside and pulled the last of the soldiers free, planted him on the sidelines outside the zone of a possible explosion. He didn't want anyone to get killed because the ship decided to throw itself all over the place.

Maybe he should have left them to their fate. He was a hunter, not any kind of shaman, he didn't know enough medicine to save anybody if something went wrong.

But he knew a little. Maybe enough. She had taught him fragments before he'd lost her, pieces of medicine and healing, philosophy and how to work with people he didn't like, how to read and write. He would have been doing her a disservice if he didn't try.

One of the soldiers, more lucid than the others, thumped his friend on the back while the friend in question tried to cough up a lung. _Smoke,_ he thought, or heat. Either could irritate the lungs. Nearby another was tying off a tourniquet, someone taking a sip from a vivid red bottle.

Someone else seemed to be doing a headcount, and it was that person who stopped in front of Noel as he laid down the newest recovery victim. "The Sergeant-- have you seen her? She's not here!"

Noel turned away and all but threw himself back into the ship, hunting for anymore bodies, any people at all. He found one near the tail, nearly buried beneath containers of who-knew-what. Getting her out took precious time, with having to uncover her, and by the time he made it back to fresh air, she wasn't breathing anymore.

Her injuries were superficial at best; he'd been a hunter long enough to know what was fatal and what was lethal. Besides, she had taught him how to breathe for others, so he waved the soldiers back and set to work.

Noel had never had call to put his knowledge into practice. It wasn't easy to remember the right process, to check her airways and breathe into her to make her lungs expand, then compress it out again. Her heart still beat, low and faint, so she wasn't dead yet, but Noel knew all her soldiers waited for her to start to breathe on her own, and they weren't the only ones.

He did it again, did his best--

She sucked in a breathe like a dying woman, which she was, and Noel rolled her over onto her side, thumped her back as she coughed, lungs stinging with smoke and burnt chemicals-- Cacoon and their chemicals, bah-- then he rolled back onto his heels, stood up, stepped back and let her soldiers come in to her aid instead.

She was... kind of pretty, he guessed. Hair the color of a poisonous flower and dressed in a Cacoon uniform, but kind of pretty.

He waited until he saw that everyone was going to be okay, as well as they could given the circumstances, and then decided that nobody was going to drop dead immediately and dug out a map from his bag, scribbled some directions on it. He shoved it into someone's bag, the corner sticking out in an obvious flag. They'd find a shaman there who could help them recover, and maybe someone who _wasn't_ a hunter who could help them figure out what to do next. By chance it also had one of the largest village militias on Pulse, so Noel didn't worry about them being able to hurt anybody down here.

Then he left. The captain was breathing, the soldiers were breathing, and the guy who did the headcount wasn't, apparently, concerned with anybody else who may have been missing. Noel had other things he had to get done. Like hunting.

Go figure they obviously all ended up wandering into his camp in the middle of the night, like a bunch of lost coeurl looking for warmth. But at least they were all still breathing. He counted that as a win.


End file.
